My research interests are broad and related primarily to language and culture. The following themes represent some of my most recent research activities.
Language Teacher Education and Professional Identity Development
In my current research project, I examine how language teachers and student teachers experience their language teacher education programs in terms of preparation for professional practice in multicultural/multilingual school environments. I am particularly interested in the links between theory and practice. I work with (student) teachers as they enter service as part of and following graduation from their programs and explore how in-service teaching impacts their professional identity development based on the theoretical and conceptual training they have received through their programs as well as their own beliefs and attitudes toward linguistic and cultural diversity. Equally important, I am interested in how the experiences of language teachers are disseminated to language teacher programs and potentially implemented into language teacher education curricula to enhance language teacher education overall. This project is international and comparative in nature as it juxtaposes the experiences of multilingual language teachers of English in Norway and Brazil.
Recent publications include:
Navigating ideologically conflicting spaces: Strengthening English language teacher identity through critical literacies (chapter)
Becoming by overcoming: Literacy development in EFL preservice teachers’ encounters with language ideologies in Brazil (chapter)
Glocalized tensions: Pre-service EFL teachers run into the monolingual, native-speaker ghost in Brazil (with Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer) (chapter)
Diversity in Second/Foreign Language Education: English and World Languages
I am interested in examining language teaching and learning through a critical lens, which includes questioning underlying assumptions, power structures, and the social implications of how language education is done. In addition to exploring socio-political issues, I work around the themes of diversity, identity, inclusion, and the internationalization of language education, often by drawing on critical pedagogies and de- or postcolonial perspectives. Most of my research in this area unfolds within or is directed at English as an additional language (e.g., second and foreign language), and on a secondary level, I have also explored my concerns within the contexts Icelandic, Norwegian, and Portuguese as additional languages. My work in this area has the overarching objective of creating more equitable, inclusive, and socially aware language learning environments.
Recent publications include:
Vulnerability to raciolinguistic ideologies within the language teaching profession: From prejudice to discrimination (with Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer) (chapter)
Canadian identity from a multicultural perspective: Foregrounding immigrant and Indigenous voices in an ESL course (chapter)
Ukrainian refugees learning Icelandic through drama plays: A multiliteracies perspective (with Artëm Ingmar Benediktsson) (chapter)
Critical Perspectives on Higher and International Education
I am interested in exploring higher and international education policy and practice primarily from perspectives of multilingualism, transnationalism, and decolonization. My research in this area began with my doctoral research through which I aimed to challenge dominant discourses around multilingual international students who speak English as an additional language, which are often marked by deficit-oriented perspectives. Expanding on these concerns, I have written about how traditional conceptions of teaching and learning in higher education perpetuate the potential for exclusion and erasure of minoritized groups, especially in light of neoliberal frameworks of education and diversity.
Recent publications include:
International students and neoliberal English-medium higher education: Contextualizing the impact of race and language ideologies (chapter)
Online instruction and international students: More challenges for a vulnerable population (chapter)
Teacher Education in the Twenty-First Century
Taking a critical perspective on teacher education in my research can mean questioning traditions, addressing issues related to social justice, and advocating for transformative, creative, and innovative changes to teacher education curricula that can empower current and future teachers to better support their students. I am particularly interested in the broader social, cultural, and political implications of teacher education, especially as intercultural and interlinguistic diversity increases globally.
Recent publications include:
Virtual reality technology in Norwegian teacher education: Creating an innovative experience or another academic elite? (with Hege Merete Somby) (chapter)
Experiential education, museums, and student teachers’ intercultural learning: Reflections on the Scandinavian Romani exhibition (with Thor-André Skrefsrud) (chapter)
Interculturality in Education, Communication (and) Research
My work in this area has focused on approaching interculturality “differently” through creative and critical experimentation in teaching, research, and especially (un)writing. I am interested in a wider range of pedagogical and methodological possibilities to (re)do and disseminate interculturality or the “intercultural” in educational contexts. This interest has encouraged me to problematize dominant perspectives within my own practice but also within the field more broadly.
Recent publications include:
Doing meshwork toward the intercultural: Reflections on teaching a course on multicultural Canada (chapter)
Interrupting identity bundles & Conscientização (encyclopaedic entries)
Secondary Interests
My secondary research interests include the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education, ethics and animal-human studies, and scholarly criticism of the Hebrew Bible (e.g., literary, psychoanalytic, narrative, and form criticism).
I have presented some of this research in conferences in Canada and internationally, most recently in the United States, Scotland, Sweden, Portugal, Ireland, and Brazil.